Over
the years and decades, this great service has saved the world from an
even more rapid warming than
it is presently experiencing.
But not even the great forests could stand for long against the
unprecedented plume of carbon coming from human fossil fuel industry.
For the great belching of heat-trapping gas by all the world’s
engines, furnaces, and fires is equal to about 4
or 5 of the Siberian flood basaltsthat
triggered the worst hothouse extinction event in Earth’s deep
history.

And
so the world has warmed very rapidly regardless of the mighty effort
on the part of forests like the Amazon. And that very heat is now
harming the trees and damaging the earth to which they are wed. For
when soils warm, the carbon they take in is leached out. And along
with the heat comes fires that can, in a matter of minutes, reduce
trees to ash and return the captured heat-trapping carbon to the
world’s airs.

(During
2015, atmospheric CO2 increased by a record annual rate of 3.05 ppm.
This happened during the build-up of one of the strongest El Ninos on
record. But as a weak La Nina settled in during late 2016 and
equatorial Pacific Ocean waters cooled, annual rates of carbon
dioxide accumulation is again on track to hit a new record high.
During mid-November, daily CO2 readings hit above 405 parts per
million. An indication that rates of accumulation had not at all
backed off from present record highs. Image source: The
Keeling Curve.)

Large
equatorial forests like the Amazon are now producing hothouse gasses
rather than taking them in. In the
Copernicus Observatory’s surface
CO2 measure, we
find areas over the Amazon Rainforest where concentrations range
between 500 and 800 parts per million —
or up to nearly double the present average global atmospheric
concentration.

(Very
high surface CO2 concentrations over the Amazon Rainforest and West
Africa are an indication that key global carbon sinks aren’t
functioning. Instead, at least for the period of June through
November of 2016, they appear to be emitting very high volumes of
stored carbon back into the atmosphere. Image source: The
Copernicus Observatory.)

It
has long been a concern among climate scientists that human carbon
emissions at the rate of nearly 50 billion tons of CO2 equivalent
gasses each year would eventually harm the world’s forests, oceans,
lands, glaciers and permafrost zones’ ability to take in that
unprecedented carbon spike. And here we have at least some indication
that this has happened, at least during 2016 and hopefully not
extending over a longer period.